“The Church needs you.”
In the first week of his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV spoke these words to members of the Eastern Catholic Churches gathered in Rome to celebrate the Jubilee. On June 2nd, he also honored an Eastern Catholic martyr, Blessed Iuliu Hossu, the Greek-Catholic Bishop of Cluj-Gherla. These providential encounters with the Christian East remind us of John Paul II’s insistent cry in Ut Unum Sint: “the Church must breathe with her two lungs!”
Pope Leo’s address for the Eastern Catholic Jubilee points to a few ways the Western lung can find inspiration for its Eastern counterpart.
1. Liturgy
First, Leo points us to the most obvious point of influence: the beauty of Eastern Catholic liturgies, which have preserved their transcendent mystery.
He comments, “The contribution that the Christian East can offer us today is immense! We have a great need to recover the sense of mystery that remains alive in your liturgies, liturgies that engage the human person in his or her entirety, that sing of the beauty of salvation and evoke a sense of wonder at how God’s majesty embraces our human frailty!”
In a world that has turned away from God, the path back is not through mundane, human-centered experiences. The West needs re-enchantment, and the Christian East offers needed witness to the way Christian liturgy can awaken the heart and imagination.
2. Asceticism
Just as the Eastern Churches have preserved their ancient liturgies, they have also maintained traditional forms of asceticism — the penance and self-discipline that have shaped Christian conversion. Pope Leo also sees this as a way of overcoming the eclipse of God in Western culture:
It is likewise important to rediscover, especially in the Christian West, a sense of the primacy of God, the importance of mystagogy and the values so typical of Eastern spirituality: constant intercession, penance, fasting and weeping for one’s own sins and for those of all humanity (penthos)! It is vital, then, that you preserve your traditions without attenuating them, for the sake perhaps of practicality or convenience, lest they be corrupted by the mentality of consumerism and utilitarianism.
Pope Leo succinctly summarizes the spiritual malaise of Western individualism, with God’s presence obscured by the constant distractions of our culture, with its monetized distractions that serve our material comfort. The asceticism of the desert focuses on Christ, turning the mind and heart to him, and disciplines the body, rather than pampering it, so that it, too, may praise God. The Church in the West often caters to our secular, consumerist culture rather than offering a serious challenge through self-discipline.
3. Prayer
Leo also emphasizes how the ascetic tradition leads to personal transformation in prayer. Eastern prayer uses icons to mediate the presence of Christ and prays especially by invoking his name in the Jesus Prayer.
The goal is divinization, finding peace through healing and transformation by grace, as Pope Leo highlights:
Your traditions of spirituality, ancient yet ever new, are medicinal. In them, the drama of human misery is combined with wonder at God’s mercy, so that our sinfulness does not lead to despair, but opens us to accepting the gracious gift of becoming creatures who are healed, divinized and raised to the heights of Heaven.
Here again, we find a broader horizon for prayer that draws one beyond a fixation on feeling and comfort.
4. Synodality
Finally, as the Church discerns a proper approach to synodality, an ancient practice of episcopal governance, Leo looks again to the East as a model. This synodality is not a democratic free-for-all that tries to reinvent the Church for a new age. Rather, it expresses the communion of the Church and the responsibility that bishops bear for the governance of the Church. Leo draws this out:
Thank you, dear brothers and sisters of the East, the lands where Jesus, the Sun of Justice, dawned, for being ‘lights in our world’ (cf. Mt 5:14). Continue to be outstanding for your faith, hope and charity, and nothing else. May your Churches be exemplary, and may your pastors promote communion with integrity, especially in the Synods of Bishops, that they may be places of fraternity and authentic co-responsibility. Ensure transparency in the administration of goods and be signs of humble and complete dedication to the holy people of God, without regard for honors, worldly power or appearance.
Let us hope that in this area, as well as the others, the East can remain a model for genuine renewal in the Church.
A Recommendation
For anyone interested in learning more about the Eastern tradition of prayer, I recommend a new book, at once deep and accessible, by Dr. Alexander Harb, The Kingdom of the Heart: Meditations from the Christian East (Sophia Institute Press, 2024). I found in the book’s third chapter, titled “The Heart,” another important reason for engaging the Eastern Churches.
Their tradition helps counter our culture of distraction and superficiality by creating interior watchfulness:
“To be constantly on the lookout for sinful or distracting thoughts and impulses is called nepsis, or watchfulness. This concept is discussed by virtually all of the Eastern Fathers. … Everything that we do makes an impression on our hearts, and therefore to be watchful, we must recognize the things that threaten the light of God there. So too, we have to know how to defend our hearts.”
Harb references the liturgy often and draws extensively from the Eastern Fathers, especially those of the desert. Here’s one example from St. Antony the Great:
“To guard the heart, Abba Antony would call out the name ‘Jesus’ continuously; then he would say it silently in his heart. Abba Antony would tell his disciples, ‘The kingdom of Heaven is within you . . . . Thus living, let us keep guard carefully, and as it is written, ‘keep our hearts with all watchfulness.’”
Growing in watchfulness will enable us to respond to the call of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom: “Let us be attentive.” To turn our attention back to the Lord, we would do well to look East, as Pope Leo has wisely recommended.
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The Holy Father commends the Eastern Churches for having retained “the sense of mystery that remains alive in [their] liturgies.” Meanwhile, in the West, some high-ranking prelates, including his predecessor, seem hell-bent on destroying that very sense wherever it threatens to be revived in the Roman-rite Church — and I’m speaking not only about the Tridentine Mass, but also about any mark of reverence (kneeling for Communion, use of Latin, women’s velings, etc.) in the Novus Ordo. Meanwhile, they have little problem with cirque de soleil extravaganzas posing as worship. I pray that Leo will at least begin to turn this situation around here at home and that the passing of Francis will mark the final nail in the coffin of liturgical experiments that, as have proven conclusively, simply don’t work.
Are we speaking of a continuum of uniformity vs. experimentation and a need to strike a balance?
Perhaps I should have used the term variation rather than experimentation, sorry.
No, we are speaking of ending self-worship and the need to prove we are inherently superior to the peoples of the past, no less than the Communion of Saints, not any of whom God abandoned to their own vanities.
You were right the first time with the demonic practice of “experimentation.”
This is a timely and much-needed reflection. In addition to the Eastern tradition’s powerful emphasis on nepsis—that vigilant attentiveness to the heart—one cannot overlook its equally profound theology of intercessory love, most luminously embodied in the writings of St. Silouan the Athonite.
For Silouan, to guard the heart was not only to reject distracting thoughts but to let it become a dwelling place of Christ’s own love for enemies. “Keep your mind in hell,” he wrote, “and despair not”—a paradox echoing the Cross, where Christ interceded for His executioners.
This deep current runs like an Ariadne’s thread through the whole of Scripture: from Abraham’s plea for Sodom, to Moses interceding for the idolatrous Israelites, to Paul’s sorrowful longing for his fellow Jews—each prefiguring the supreme intercession of the Crucified Lord.
The Eastern Fathers remind us that true watchfulness is inseparable from mercy, and that spiritual vigilance is perfected not only in stillness, but in the pierced, praying heart.
Pope Leo’s turn toward the Eastern lung of the Church is not only liturgical but deeply Christological—calling us to a renewal of our interior lives, where attention, forgiveness, and intercession converge in the likeness of Christ.
“For anyone interested in learning more about the Eastern tradition of prayer…”, Dr. Staudt recommends a good book.
For anyone interested in also understanding what Pope Leo means when he urges the Eastern Churches to “preserve your traditions without attenuating them […] lest they be corrupted by the mentality of consumerism and utilitarianism”…yours truly recommends an insight about interreligious “pluralism”…
As with consumerism and attenuation:
“Islam has not wanted to choose between Heaven and Earth. It proposed instead a blending of heaven and earth, sex and mysticism [!], war and proselytism, conquest and apostolate [!]. In more general terms, Islam proposed a blending of the spiritual and the temporal worlds which neither in Islam nor among the pagans [!] have ever been divided” (Jean Guitton, “Great Heresies and Church Councils,” 1965, p. 116).
So, yes, about the “Eastern Catholic liturgies, which have preserved their transcendent mystery”.
This article presents a vision brimming with hope for the future of the Western Church, yet it cannot but call to mind the great paradox that lingers unaddressed: How is it that such lofty expressions of renewal coexist with the relentless suppression of the Latin Mass? That sacred liturgy, imbued with the reverence and mystery that nourished the faith of centuries, has been met not with magnanimity but with restriction—indeed, often with outright censure—by bishops, cardinals, and even the successors of Peter themselves. Is it not the very fabric of Catholic tradition that should be guarded, not diminished? When shall Rome, with a voice full of conviction, affirm the rightful place of the Latin Mass in the life of the Church, granting local parishes the freedom to cultivate this venerable form of worship according to the needs and desires of the faithful?
Nobody really tries to offer cogent answers to such questions. Pope Benedict XVI suggested “hermeneutic of continuity” as a prophylactic, but his successor spurned that. It would be great if Pope Leo would give a try.
It really is a form of intellectual schizophrenia to praise Eastern liturgies, and then to attempt to slam the door on a recovery of analogous features of the historic Roman Liturgy. Pope Francis did that. Does anybody remember his praise of the Ukrainian Catholic Liturgy based on his experience o0f it in Argentina?
100% agree.
And the sign of actual sincerity about these comments by Pope Leo XIV will be if he restores B16’s Summorum Pontificum, and liberates the faithful from malicious – and to evoke the words of JP2 – the refusal of Bishops to be “generous” in supporting the faithful who know and love the ancient Roman Rite of the Mass.
And if that doesn’t happen…these words of Pope Leo XIV will ring hollow.
AMEN!
Yes, how to restore the whole “fabric” from the fragmenting”seamless garment”?
Speaking of Pope Leo’s latest messages, has anyone read USCCB’s report at https://www.usccb.org/news/2025/diversity-cause-strength-not-division-pope-tells-rome-clergy
Does anyone detect a ‘spin’ in the first paragraph? Does the body of the report appear congruent or different from the first paragraph??? Please explain to help me understand. Thanks.
Thanks to meiron for nudging me to read this wonderful article. But unfortunately I cannot help you as I don’t understand what troubles you about it. I see no incongruities anywhere in this piece. Perhaps meiron could be more specific about his difficulty. Pope Leo was merely pointing out the value to these priests and to Rome in general of being able to live and work among people of such varying cultural backgrounds. It is bound to affect them as in other ways it has affected me throughout my life. They will get an education beyond the books and classrooms that they will bring with them when they return home. Living with diversity can be enlightening and enriching. We need not feel compelled to follow or adopt every way that is different but it helps to grow in appreciation and love for others. Sorry I am not expressing this well.
Why not have married priests with families like the Eastern Church and the New Testament Church !
Meiron above – I see what you mean about diversity being a strength but I wouldn’t worry too much. For me, the main takeaway from Leo’s talks to priests is the complete change of tone from what we/they have been subjected to pre-May 8.
Let us pray and hope the wind change lasts.
Yes, in the East a married man can become a priest. But in the Ruthenian church (& others) the wife must be able to support herself & the children financially. Not so easy. In a sense, the wife must commit to supporting the priestly ministry.
If the wife dies, the priest cannot remarry. No dating when an ordained Eastern Rite priest.
So while married priests of the East are a beautiful tradition, it is a great sacrifice of the wife & children. A very difficult life.
The phrasing of the headline, “Why we need the Eastern Churches,” is interesting. It strikes my ear as a bit patronizing and condescending. (I’m not suggesting that Pope Leo himself is indulging in that posture, by the way.)
Consider how one might view that headline if turned around, that is, pointing from the Eastern perspective toward the West: “Why we need the Roman Catholic Church.”
Yes, we do need the Eastern Churches.
We also need the Latin Church.
Why is there the sixty year old enterprise to suppress it, metamorphosize it — its liturgy, its spirituality, its artistic expression? The only characteristic of the traditional Latin Church not subject to mutilation is the deference provided to the episcopate — for the time being that is — a body of men exercising authority so many of whom are not qualified to exercise any sort of authority at all. Throughout the spectrum of superiors in the Church this is a lethal stumbling block — when there is a dearth of vocations there is a dearth of expertise of any sort. This week we are treated to a newly discovered fifty million dollar deficit in a prominent archdiocese unaddressed for the past five years. Then there are the pastoral issues…
The new and improved “Latin” Church is soon to be known as the Synodal Church and the dearth of flair for administration and pastoral care will be solved by the introduction of uncatechized laity into the loop. Uncatechized laity…uncatechized bishops…but well educated academic scholars of, of, of what? That’s done the trick.
Maybe all we need is a post-Christian post-theocentric sort of protestantism where the seat of the pants is indeed well worn while the knees are crisp creased and clean.
Your response to my comment does not quite address the point I was attempting to make. That said, however, it goes one better. (Or at least that’s one view of it.)
What you touch on is certainly germane. If I read it correctly, the Church (RCC) has since Vatican II gotten rather off course–in its liturgy, spirituality, “artistic expression,” and (I would add) music)–with some pretty unfortunate consequences. The causes of that phenomenon are manifold, but some of it can be attributed to pride and the attendant blindness and short-sightedness that go with it.
My original point meant to suggest that those attributes (pride, etc.) are evident all too often in the attitude of certain members and spokespersons of the Church toward other communions, including but not limited to Eastern Orthodoxy. I contend that a large dose of humility, along with genuine charity, in this regard would be much more beneficial and fruitful both in the short term and in the long.
We [the ecclesial powers that be] need the Eastern Churches in diversionary pretense that we’re devoted to silence and beauty in the liturgy while we crush what remains of it in the West.
Forgive my cynicism.
Well, Father, if I mere lay person–and a sin-laden one at that–can grant a priest forgiveness for a warranted bit of ‘cynicism,’ then consider yourself forgiven. Go in peace.
Hello. All due respect. Maybe it’s where I attended HolyMass.
When the service is over, to me it’s like I attended a Protestant church service . I attended TLM for a time but the Roman Catholic Church has the TLM Catholics in an unresolved situation. I’m now attending The Greek Orthodox Divine liturgy. That’s a nice sentiment from the Pope but it’s not going to happen. Besides that we Orthodox don’t appreciate being called “The Eastern Lung” . The Orthodox really don’t want the Roman Catholic influence because it has been compromised corrupted, and watered down. But I still love the West. After 72 years of worship in the Roman Catholic experiences it seems my heart led me to Othodox.